The evidence is a letter from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the congressman who’s made a hobby out of sensational letters and reports on low-wattage scandals. And Issa’s letter only says that “there was speculation in the press that former Chief of Staff to the First Lady Jackie Norris may have influenced the President’s action because she left the White House to become a senior advisor at [the Corporation for National and Community Service] around the time of Mr. Walpin’s removal.” Where did that speculation come from? It came from a Michelle Malkin column.

In 1993, just after Bill Clinton was elected and Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, a lone Republican congressman, Rep. Bill Clinger, wanted to investigate the suspicious firings of the White House Travel Office staff. But majority Democrats had no inclination to pursue the matter. Clinger tried and tried, wrote letter after letter, and jumped up and down, but he didn’t begin to get results until after November 1994, when Republicans took control of both Houses of Congress.

The Travel Office? Really? To call “Travelgate” a phony scandal is to bring discredit to the concept of “phoniness.” After a seven-year investigation (nearly seven years after five of the fired employees got new federal jobs) all the inspectors discovered about the Travel Office firings was that then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton made some false statements about how it began. The Americorps story, like that story, might take on momentum, but “Travelgate” is typically and correctly remembered as an example of how politicized scandals can be spun out of nothing. If the Obama administration didn’t realize this before, it really should now.

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